50 Fun Facts About Trucking

In Smokey and the Bandit, which brand of beer do two truckers race illegally from Texarkana to Atlanta?

Coors was not sold east of Texas in 1977, and with no preservatives it could spoil within a week unrefrigerated, which is why the film's haul has a 28-hour deadline.

Which future rock and roll singer was an unknown young truck driver when Sam Phillips recorded him in Memphis in 1954?

Elvis Presley had first walked into the Sun studio a year earlier and paid $3.98 plus tax to cut a private acetate record.

In the 2007 Transformers film, Optimus Prime turns into a blue and red semi built by which American truck maker?

Peterbilt made the long-hooded 379 that plays him on screen, while the original 1980s toy was likely modelled on a flat-fronted Freightliner.

Which former Teamsters president vanished from a restaurant parking lot near Detroit in 1975 and was never found?

Jimmy Hoffa, who led the union from 1957 to 1971, drove to the Machus Red Fox for a meeting, and his unlocked car was later found in the lot with no sign of him.

James Cameron quit his job as a truck driver to become a filmmaker after seeing which science fiction movie?

Star Wars thrilled Cameron in 1977, and he walked away from a run of odd jobs that had also included a spell as a high school janitor.

On CB radio, which ten-code do truckers use to say a message has been received and understood?

10-4 means acknowledged, and CB users even flip it around to 4-10 when asking whether the other driver agrees.

Which horror novelist directed Maximum Overdrive, a 1986 film about killer trucks with a soundtrack by AC/DC?

Stephen King adapted the film from his own short story Trucks in his directing debut, then disowned the result and never directed again.

Which actor, whose own father drove a truck of the same make, voices Mack the transporter in Pixar's Cars films?

John Ratzenberger voices Mack, a modified 1985 Mack Super-Liner who serves as Lightning McQueen's loyal transporter.

The trucker anthem Convoy was sung by C. W. McCall, a character first invented to advertise which product on television?

Bread from the Old Home brand was the product, and ad man Bill Fries voiced the fictional driver in the commercials before turning him into a recording act.

Which country singer played the trucker Snowman in Smokey and the Bandit and also sang its theme song?

Jerry Reed wrote East Bound and Down virtually overnight, and the director had at first planned to cast him as the Bandit himself.

Which country songwriter and actor played the trucker Rubber Duck in Sam Peckinpah's 1978 film Convoy?

Kris Kristofferson played opposite Ali MacGraw, and the film went on to be the most commercially successful of its director's career.

In the NBC series B.J. and the Bear, the trucker hero's travelling companion Bear is which kind of animal?

A chimpanzee named after the Alabama football coach Bear Bryant rode in the cab of the hero's red and white Kenworth.

In the 1987 film Over the Top, Sylvester Stallone's long-haul trucker Lincoln Hawk competes in which sport?

Arm wrestling takes Hawk to a world championship in Las Vegas, where he competes while trying to win back his estranged son.

Which actor plays the truck driver Jack Burton in John Carpenter's 1986 action comedy Big Trouble in Little China?

Kurt Russell played Burton as a blowhard who narrates his own legend over the CB radio, a comic twist on the straightforward cowboy hero of the first script.

In the 1953 French thriller The Wages of Fear, four desperate men drive trucks loaded with which dangerous cargo?

Nitroglycerin was needed to blast out an oil well fire, and the mountain dirt roads made the job too dangerous for the oil company's own union drivers.

In the first season of Ice Road Truckers, drivers hauled supplies over frozen lakes to remote mines producing what?

Diamonds drew the trucks north, and the series itself grew out of a 2000 documentary based on the book Denison's Ice Road.

Which country singer topped the charts in 1976 with Teddy Bear, a spoken tale of a disabled boy on the CB?

Red Sovine reached number one in five weeks with the song, his first country chart-topper since Giddyup Go a decade earlier.

Which singer's 1988 country number one is about a trucker named Charlie retiring after thirty years on the road?

Kathy Mattea took Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses to the top for two weeks, the longest stay at number one of her career.

The Teamsters union, which represents many American truckers, takes its name from workers who originally drove what?

Horse-drawn wagons pulled by teams of oxen, horses or mules gave the teamster his name, and the union was formed in 1903 by merging two rival team drivers' unions.

Which truck convoy system, staffed mostly by Black American soldiers, began supplying Allied armies in August 1944?

The Red Ball Express ran for 83 days on a route closed to civilian traffic, and at its peak close to 6,000 vehicles hauled about 12,500 tons of supplies a day.

Which sweeping change did the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, signed by Jimmy Carter, bring to American trucking?

Deregulation let carriers publish their own rates and raise or cut them by 15 percent without challenge, while opening the business to new entrants.

North Carolina trucking magnate Malcom McLean transformed world trade in 1956 by launching which way of moving cargo?

Container shipping began when his converted tanker Ideal-X sailed from Newark for Houston carrying 58 trailer vans, at a time when longshore workers moved most cargo manually.

Before inventing refrigerated truck units, Frederick McKinley Jones built sound equipment for which industry?

Cinema projectors ran on his superior sound system, and the same employer later asked him to design a cooling unit for trucks hauling perishable food.

The first semi-trailer truck, built by Cleveland inventor Alexander Winton in 1898, was designed to haul which cargo?

New automobiles were the load, because Winton wanted to ship his cars to customers without putting mileage on them, and he was soon selling haulers to rival makers.

Which numbered CB radio channel became known as the truckers' channel, the one most highway travelers monitor?

Channel 19 became the highway favorite partly because it sat clear of interference with channel 9, which regulators reserved for emergencies in 1969.

What do CB radio users call the on-air nickname, such as Rubber Duck, that a driver adopts instead of a real name?

A handle became the norm at the height of the CB craze, when many users ignored the rule requiring official call signs and invented their own names.

In trucker CB slang, which animal lends its name to a large strip of shredded tire lying on the highway?

An alligator, or gator, is so called because from a distance the torn tread can look like the reptile sunning itself on the road.

When truckers on the CB radio warn each other about a chicken coop, which roadside facility do they mean?

A weigh station earns the nickname chicken coop, and a driver who rolls past one without stopping is said to be flying the coop.

Many towns post signs banning Jake brakes because of which side effect of the truck engine brake?

Loud noise from the exhaust, likened to a machine gun or a jackhammer, is the complaint, and the nickname comes from Jacobs Vehicle Systems, the first company to make the device.

Which horseshoe-shaped coupling on a tractor unit locks around the kingpin beneath the front of a semi-trailer?

The fifth wheel takes its name from a similar pivoting coupling once fitted to four-wheeled carriages and carts pulled by animals.

Which friendly-sounding name do truckers give the interlocking couplers that carry air from tractor to trailer?

Glad hands get the name because the two connectors look like a pair of palms clasped in a shake once they are locked together.

Diesel exhaust fluid, sometimes marketed as AdBlue and used to clean up truck emissions, is water mixed with what?

Urea makes up 32.5 percent of the solution, which is why the international standard calls the fluid AUS 32.

Which device fitted to commercial trucks in Europe automatically records speed, distance and the driver's activity?

A tachograph was made mandatory for heavy commercial vehicles in Germany as early as 1952, and older analogue models trace the day onto wax-coated paper discs.

Runaway truck ramps beside steep mountain descents are typically filled with which material to stop a vehicle?

Sand or gravel creates rolling resistance that drags a truck to a halt after its brakes have overheated and failed on a long downgrade.

In the freight business, what does the abbreviation LTL stand for?

Less than truckload carriers collect freight from many customers at local terminals and combine it at central hubs before sending it on.

In trucker slang, what is a tractor unit called when it is driving along with no trailer attached?

A bobtail is a road tractor running solo, while in the same CB slang a truck towing another truck is riding piggy back.

British soldiers in World War I gave the Mack AC truck which nickname, later cast as the company's hood ornament?

The Bulldog stuck, and in 1932 Mack's chief engineer carved the first hood ornament while he was recuperating from an operation.

The world's largest truck stop, with its own dentist and trucking museum, stands beside Interstate 80 in which state?

Iowa is home to the stop, built at Walcott in 1964 by a Standard Oil regional manager beside the emerging highway.

Kenworth, whose name blends the surnames of partners Kent and Worthington, was founded in 1923 in which American city?

Seattle was the birthplace, where the Gersix Motor Company was reincorporated under the new name, and the headquarters later settled in the suburb of Kirkland.

Freightliner began as the in-house truck-building division of which Portland, Oregon freight carrier?

Consolidated Freightways founder Leland James wanted lighter trucks for western mountain grades, so his division built them with aluminum in place of steel.

Which food and drink giant took delivery of the first production Tesla Semi electric trucks in December 2022?

PepsiCo put the trucks to work hauling Pepsi drinks and Frito-Lay snacks, three years after the production start first predicted by Elon Musk.

Which ride-hailing company bought the self-driving truck startup Otto in August 2016 for an estimated $680 million?

Uber owned Otto when one of its trucks drove 132 miles across Colorado with no human intervention, then shut the truck project down in 2018.

Which Russian truck maker has won the truck class of the Dakar Rally more often than any other manufacturer?

Kamaz, based in the Tatarstan city of Naberezhnye Chelny, has dominated the category since the turn of the century through its Kamaz Master team.

Dekotora, trucks covered in neon lights and murals after a hit 1970s film series, are a subculture of which country?

Japan caught the craze after the studio Toei released Torakku Yaro, or Truck Guys, in 1975, the first of ten films starring a lavishly decorated rig.

American troops serving in Afghanistan knew Pakistan's lavishly decorated cargo vehicles by which nickname?

Jingle trucks earned the name from the chains and pendants hanging off their bumpers, which ring as the vehicles roll along.

SCS Software, the studio behind the Euro Truck Simulator games, is based in which European capital?

Prague is home to the studio, which followed its European hit with American Truck Simulator in 2016.

Which 2003 trucking video game, in which the rival vehicle never moves, became the worst-rated title on Metacritic?

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing was released unfinished and without collision detection, so the player's truck can drive straight through the motionless opponent.

In early 2022, truckers protesting vaccine mandates for cross-border drivers gridlocked which capital city for weeks?

Ottawa saw hundreds of vehicles converge for a rally at Parliament Hill, and the federal government responded by invoking the Emergencies Act.

In which country is the phrase Horn OK Please traditionally painted across the backs of trucks and buses?

India made the phrase a fixture of its roads, though the state of Maharashtra banned it in 2015 on the grounds that it encouraged needless honking.

Alaska's Dalton Highway, a remote haul road famous from trucking television, was built in 1974 to support what?

An oil pipeline, the Trans-Alaska system, needed a supply route, and the 414-mile road ends at Deadhorse near the Arctic Ocean.